The 3 Fictional Presidents We Could Use Right Now

#1. President Camacho

Idiocracy

President He Most Closely Resembles:

Andrew Jackson + Abraham Lincoln

Idiocracy is a movie about a modern-day man of average intelligence who gets sent 500 years into the future, where the average IQ has dropped to the low 20s, making him the smartest man in the world. Future America is a wasteland; the crops are failing (they're being watered with a Gatorade-like substance), the economy is in the toilet, and logic and reason have taken a back seat to loudness and a TV show where people get hit in the testicles. And this is the president:

President Camacho. Former pro wrestler turned porn star turned president. He dresses in American flag pants, he addresses the nation by dancing, singing, and firing a gun into the air and rallying them with his aggressively patriotic (if completely empty) rhetoric. He's energetic, likable, and absolutely captivating.

It's not just flash, by the way. Sure, he may drive a monster truck, and sure, he wears a giant medal around his neck. But President Camacho's bombastic patriotism is not only inspirational and exciting and explosive, it's also an incredibly useful quality for a leader to have, especially for his situation. America was struggling through a time of unprecedented poverty and loss, but it had a leader who still thought America was the best place in the world. The ability to recognize a country's flaws is certainly important, but people need to believe that their president wouldn't rather be anywhere else.

A country can't be great if its people haven't already blindly accepted it as such, and the people won't know to do that without a strong, passionate president leading the charge. That's who Andrew Jackson was. Andrew Jackson was a man who lost his wife, brother, and parents, so he decided he would make America his surrogate family. He lived, loved, and never left America, and if anyone or anything threatened her, he would come after them with the force and intensity of a man protecting his wife and children. That's what I want. I want America to be run by someone who doesn't just love America -- I want him or her to love the shit out of America. Just look at President Camacho. He screams America, he breathes America, America makes him hard as a rock. When times are tough on a country, sometimes the most important thing to hear is someone shouting "We're number one! We're number one!" It gives you hope.

It's not just President Camacho's patriotism that makes him a great leader. Eventually, Joe is brought to the attention of President Camacho. This weird-talking time traveler with his fancy ideas made it all the way to the White House, because an IQ test claimed he was the smartest man alive. And when that happened, President Camacho did a remarkable thing. He recognized that Joe was smarter, and he bowed to his wisdom. Everyone -- everyone -- in the world of Idiocracy resented Joe, because he talked differently and because his ideas, to them, sounded crazy. They turned against him out of their fear, their pride, and their inability to understand him. Everyone else, when faced with Joe's unconventional ideas, immediately went on the defensive and resented Joe. He didn't fit in with their weird hive mind of delusion and idiocy. Yet for all of his pomposity and ridiculousness, Camacho had the clarity of mind to look beyond all that. What he saw was a man who was smarter than himself, and he had no problem humbling himself and saying "Let's trust the smart guy."

President Lincoln was like that. He stacked his cabinet with his most vocal rivals, because Lincoln wasn't afraid to hear what someone else had to say. Knowledge was king for Lincoln. Even if he didn't totally like or understand someone, he respected ideas. Like Camacho. (Also like Camacho, I think Lincoln was a porn superstar before his presidency.) I want a president who isn't so proud that he's embarrassed to say he doesn't know something. A president who values thought, experimentation, and facts over gut or superstition, a president who will find the smartest guy in the room and ask him for advice.

Getty"Hey, Neil DeGrasse Tyson -- why don't you go ahead and take the wheel on the country for a while?"